The meeting was officially organized under the patronage of the Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries of the General Conference.

It is superfluous to underline again and again the decisive influence a chaplain has in a school environment. Given this crucial role and the need to get proper and regular training, the Inter-European Chaplaincy Department organized a first training event in a series of successive meetings of this kind.

For this first orientation, the public target was made up of Chaplains from secondary schools, academies, universities and AMiCUS chaplains, coming from Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain who gathered, on March 18-21, 2018 in the snowed up campus of the Adventus University, Cernica, Romania.

The guest speakers are well-known worldwide, given both their expertise and the materials they published so far: Dr. Rich Carlson, Vice-President of Union College, USA who spend his entire professional carrier (44 years) in Chaplaincy, the last 37 at Union College, and Gina Creek-Jacob, Director, Leadership Development, Adventist Health System, who previously worked as assistant to Dr. Carlson during her collegiate years, and wrote “Crafting a Culture”.

With catching passion and irresistible conviction both of them broached topics like: Purpose, Vision Casting, Mentoring and Training, The importance of teams, Student involvement etc.

As the meeting was officially organized under the patronage of the Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries of the General Conference, the participants received Certificates of Continuing Education issued by the Loma Linda University School of Religion, that later on might qualify the attendees for Board Certification in Chaplaincy.

“This Chaplaincy training was for me, without any exageration, the best training in my 13 years pastoral career. To get insight into the 37-year long Chaplaincy work of brother Rich was inspirational and at the same time of real practical use. I returned to Germany with lots of new ideas and a good portion of enthusiasm. Having the opportunity to connect to the other Chaplains and the schools they activate in, was also a real blessing”, said Mircea Riesz, chaplain of the largest academy in the EUD territory, Schulzentrum Marienhoehe, Germany.

And the chaplain of the largest “Kindergarden to Post-Secondary studies” school in the EUD – Centro Educativo Adventista Sagunto, Spain – Stefan Albu, concluded: “There are two types of ministerial meetings: a. where you receive information, good and relevant information, appropriate examples and illustrations; b. where you receive inspiration and motivation to discover your way of doing your ministry. The last meeting with the Chaplains of the Adventist Educational Institutions of EUD was a second type one. I was very blessed, inspired and motivated to take my chaplainship ministry to higher levels of excellency.

As a result we have redesign our Spiritual Master Plan and our Campus Ministry philosophy of work. Gina and Rich were sharing with us incarnated values of their chaplainship experience and ministry. We thank the organizers for these inspirational meetings.”